


Business

by kryptic



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Existing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Multi, future abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-07 10:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptic/pseuds/kryptic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When ambition and sentimentality clash, only one can take precedence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“What is it?” he asks. He leans over his desk, braced on two arms, his body hanging down and his head tilted up toward her. Terse words leave his lips, but there is a question hovering at the back of his mind.

_Business?_

_Or the other thing?_

He shouldn’t hope for it. He should hope for business. It’s the only thing, he tells himself, the only thing that matters.

Lurk’s dark-gloved hands lift the mask. She stares back at him impassively with darkest eyes.

“Business.”

The woman doesn’t need black magic; she can easily read his mind without it.  
Damn her.

And yet she plows on without the slightest flicker of regard for his unease.

Her voice is sly and sensual.  
Chocolate and cream dissolve on his tongue.  
He is practiced in the art of ignoring.  
Her lips. Her throat.  
Her scowl.

“We’re losing traction with our contacts in the Abbey. It’s time to cut our losses and sever ties.”

“We’ll be discovered.”

“We were always going to be. This position is highly defensible. Better they find us here than anywhere else.”

He stares at her for a moment and she gives him not an inch, not a single sign that she may doubt her ruling.

With a nod, he signals that he trusts her judgment. They move on.

“Is that all you came for?”

It is a query meant to be purposefully condescending, filled with the bitter impatience shown to the vast majority of his men.  
But Lurk isn’t one of his men.  
Well.

“And if it is?” she asks, calling his bluff.

“Billie,” he says, a warning tone. Or a yearning one.

She hears both.

Answers by drawing closer.  
Places a boot against the edge of his desk and leans forward, arm draped across her knee.

“Daud.”

He’s never been a man to turn down a challenge.  
His shoulder faces her squarely, his feet finding the floor perpendicular to the direction of her body.

There is nothing of any importance currently on his desk.  
He pretends there is. His hands rifle around in the old letters marked for the furnace and the portraits of targets long dead, the bundles of envelopes he can’t quite bring himself to throw away.

Lurk’s footsteps fade halfway to the door and stop. He can’t break his façade of nonchalance and glance at her.

“There is one other thing.”

Daud’s neck nearly breaks at the speed it’s snapped up to look at her.  
He can spy only a flash of red as she hurls her coat toward him.

He catches it one-handed and rubs the fabric between his fingers.

A glove strikes his chest. Then another.  
They fall to the ground at his feet with identical leather thuds.

He flings her coat onto the floor beneath his desk.

His chin is suddenly clamped between her fingers, his breath mingling with hers, fresh and warm against the rancid chill outside.

“What is it?” he asks.

She stares him down, a few inches below his level. Her face hovers a hand’s breadth from his own.

“Murphy,” she says. “He’s refused to divulge the plans unless we double our offer.”

“Mm.”  
He buys his time with a pittance of a noise. It’s an embarrassment.  
The problem barely requires an ounce of thought toward his answer, but Lurk’s face looming in his sight is an obstacle he can barely look past.  
“Tell him that he can have a knife in his back if he doesn’t settle for what we’ve given him.”

“I already have.”

And he cannot think of a single thing to say.

She inhales and tips her chin upward, full lips taunting him. He tracks them with his eyes and feels his own parting.  
They are schooled back into a firm line immediately. He cannot afford to slip again.  
There is no glint in her eyes to show that she has registered his mistake. For all that he can see of that impenetrable gaze, his second is playing an entirely different game.

“Is that all?

“All of what?”

“Business.”

“Yes.”

There is a pause, but her face is carved in stone. Unreadable.  
Somewhere, there is a fire hidden in her countenance. He can feel its heat against his skin.

“You have my permission to leave.”

He should have her now. Daud has left her no more moves.  
So he leans in.  
The salt of stagnant water scratches at the tip of his tongue.  
The flat of his inner forearm fits against the curve of her waist.

She slips backward.  
The rustle of cloth scrapes across his hearing.

The final score is carved out in the space between them.

His mouth is filled with nothing but the emptiness of the crumbling district, and the back of Billie Lurk escapes his vision.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her hair will not brush his cheek as she bends to kiss him.  
> Her breath will not tickle his neck as she says goodbye.
> 
> When she goes, she will go silently.

Her fingers walk their way across his chest. His skin is warm, crisscrossed with scars. He snores lightly and his ribs surge up against her hand in perfect rhythm.

“Master,” she says.  
Not bothering to whisper.

He stirs against the word in his ear, eyes roving wildly beneath their lids.  
Then he finds himself and his arm tightens around the muscularly female form beside him. He relaxes again, unconcerned. Safe.

“Mm.”  
It is a typical three in the morning answer.  
He can’t spare the energy to force his lips into the shapes of speech.

Her head is on his shoulder and her palm on one of his love handles.  
They are covered in darkness and in cold sweat rising into the saturated, brackish-flavored air.  
She pierces his dreams and warms the blackness into rich, bitter chocolate.

“Do you always sleep so heavily?” she asks.

Only with you, he almost answers.  
The delirium of sleep has loosened the armor over his heart, but it also saves him. It is too much of an effort to tell her what she already must know.

A heavy sigh is his only response.  
She presses her lips against the skin of his neck.  
Not a kiss.

He rolls over onto his side and squeezes until her body molds against his, as if to tell her to be quiet. Go to sleep. Stop being difficult.

“I'm leaving this morning. Before you wake up. You know that.”

“I do.”  
That is all he manages.  
He sent her, after all. It would be foolish to show regret.  
He doesn’t regret it.  
He doesn’t.

They knew, coming into this, that above all, they would do the job. When they fell into bed together, when they met with clashing teeth and red coats discarded on the aching floor, it would always be with blood on their hands.

_I’ll miss you._

He doesn’t say it.  
He doesn’t.

From a professional standpoint, of course, it’s true. Most of the time, he can hardly be bothered to deal with anyone besides his most trusted assassins, let alone the pawns - the idiots who still do frontflips from roof to roof. He will miss her efficiency, her intuition, her firm hand.

Even if he did say it, what would it matter? It would change nothing.  
She will still leave the next morning.

He will be collapsed among a tangle of sheets. Semen. Sweat. Blood. Memory.  
She will stand over him in her dark shirt and her darker coat with her sword in her hand. As beautiful and as commanding as he’s ever seen her.

Her hair will not brush his cheek as she bends to kiss him.  
Her breath will not tickle his neck as she says goodbye.  


When she goes, she will go silently. Her boots will make no noise on the creaking floor.  
She will vanish in black smoke and he will sleep on, his body knotted into the discomfort of nightmares that plague him when there is no shadow to guard his back.

Neither will regret.

So they drink the moment as they have it.

Daud presses his forehead into her hair and disregards the itch of it against his face. She smells of heat and spice and death.  
Her body remains taut and tense.  
His unwinds and turns to liquid as he falls into darkness again.

She traces his scars until he sleeps.

He peels open his eyes the next morning with the wind running its fingers through his hair.  
Her orders are missing. The note is there, waiting to be burned, reaffirming where she’s gone. The blankets are wound about his waist and the marks of her hands linger on the softest parts of him.

He pulls on his clothes like an afterthought and crumbles down the stairs.

Daud casts no shadow that day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The days pass as they have always passed.  
> Of course he can function without her. As time drips by, he begins to acclimatize himself to her absence. Things become easier.  
> He is like an amputee learning to walk again.  
> It is shameful.

The days pass as they have always passed.  
Of course he can function without her. As time drips by, he begins to acclimatize himself to her absence. Things become easier.  
He is like an amputee learning to walk again.  
It is shameful.

With reckless determination, it takes perhaps a week until he is comfortable in his own skin. There is no time to slow his stride. There are contracts to take out, poisons to prepare, elixirs to steal.  
And there is the Abbey, recently cut loose, stewing away in their own corruption and greed.  
They are coming.  
He is unconcerned.

Rinaldo hands a missive to him one stale afternoon. Daud’s eyebrows crinkle into a scowl as he stares down at the letter. There are few messages which could be important enough to go to all the effort of delivering to Daud's territory.  
The paper is thick, heavy, cream-colored. Decadent, even. Not at all what his assassins use in their own communications.  
Attached, there is a thin sheet from Lurk, in the code understood only between them.

He slits the first open in full knowledge of what it will say.

Thomas stands by, for the moment promoted to second. He is not allowed to read over Daud’s shoulder, but the head assassin hands him the letter as soon as he is finished with it.

“Master,” the inferior says, no tone of fear in his voice. “What will we do?”

Daud’s lip twitches as he lays an old map of the Financial District across his desk and stacks another sheet of paper on top of it. His hand traces casually with bold, broad strokes even as he glances at the other man.

“Wait for them. Kill them. It’s no more than they deserve.”  
He almost wants to mutter curses upon them under his breath, but that would be redundant. Everyone knows how he feels about the Overseers.

Another question strikes him across the face.

“When do you think they will come?”

He grunts and calculates, never breaking concentration on his work.  
“Not for some time. Months.”

The room is silent as he lays down the basic shapes of the area. Thomas watches, stoic, standing.  
A good man, Daud thinks with approval. Not that he will ever say it.

At last, he lays the pen aside. Ever the perfectionist, he straightens and peers down at his work for a few tense seconds.  
It will do for the time being.

He points to Thomas with a hand as casual as it is commanding.  
“Take a party of men to the poor districts. Send your best to Bottle Street. Plainclothes. Plant a few false rumors to keep them looking. Something probable.”

There is no more discussion on the subject. The assassin goes with his orders. Daud is left alone again.

He occupies himself with busywork as the sun commences its descent into the horizon. A few men are spoken to and given their instructions for the coming storm, long into the future.  
Twilight is turning toward them when the next message arrives.

Daud looks down at it, pins his tongue between his teeth. He knows that stationery, just as he knows the loopy handwriting that spreads his name like slander across the page.  
“The Royal Spymaster,” he snarls.

The messenger takes a step backward, then another.  
Everyone knows how he feels about Burrows.

His eyes scan the paper at a rapid pace beneath brows furrowed with irritation.

But something unexpected happens then.  
Instead of chewing his lip, pacing the room, flying into a loosely controlled rage, he stops.  
Pauses.  
Falls silent.

“The empress.”

His heart drums in his ears, unwelcome.  
A stranger hovers in his throat and perches on his tongue.  
Is this guilt?

An assassin does not feel guilt, the monologue says.  
(An assassin feels warm blood on his hands.  
An assassin feels a coin clutched in his palm.  
An assassin feels the sword strapped to his belt.  
An assassin feels sensation, not emotion.)

His back has bent itself almost double. The weight of the world is hurtling toward him.

He leaves the envelope on his desk and dismisses the lone Whaler with a hollow voice.  
Left in solitude again, he indulges and broods.

The fading light barely beats down upon his back.  
He sparks no lantern, opts instead to stare up at the stars.  
The night air meets his lips and lines his lungs.  
He lies in bed with the letter beneath his pillow.

Tells himself that he does not need help with this decision.

(An assassin does not feel love for his country.  
An assassin does not feel a woman in his arms.  
An assassin does not feel loss for his childhood.  
For his mother.  
For his lover.  
For his dreams.  
An assassin does not feel guilt.)

Daud cannot sleep well that night.  
He tosses and turns, longs for the shadow against his side.  
She would know what to do.  
From a purely professional standpoint, of course.

Does this make him weak?  
The indecision, certainly. He has never been an indecisive man.  
But this dalliance with Lurk.  
Can this be appropriate?

Is this what has softened him?

He wakes in the wee hours with heavy eyes. They ache and itch as if he has wept.  
It is not yet dawn, but he will not find rest.  
His hands hang loosely between his knees. They link at the fingers as if in prayer.  
The sun rises by what seem like centuries.  
The minutes scrape at his soul.

The first thing he does in the morning is send a message, beckoning her to him.

The next thing he does is call back the messenger.

Take the letter.

And rip it into shreds.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He turns away as he speaks, his back to her. It is a motion that he has worn often lately.
> 
> She’s become accustomed to the sight of his shoulders.  
> Broad. Proud. Red.  
> And increasingly indecisive.

In the end, he takes the job.

With Lurk’s blessing, of course, once she returns.  
She’s never cared for the high-born, nor much for the goodness in anyone’s heart. She speaks of the coin that the empress’s death would bring in, this noblest of nobles, and asks if Daud doesn’t want the same.

“I do,” he says, muddy grey eyes crawling across Jessamine’s portrait. Even as they speak, he traces it in his mind’s eye and studies one of the three most beautiful women he’s ever seen.

(Billie Lurk. Lizzy Stride. Jessamine Kaldwin.)

She interrupts his thoughts without knowing she is on his mind.

“Think of the recognition. Anyone in Dunwall who doesn’t already know your name will remember it forever.” There is a smile on her lips as she says it, eagerness. She wants that for him. He wants it for himself.

“I’m taking the job.”

He turns away as he speaks, his back to her. It is a motion that he has worn often lately.

She’s become accustomed to the sight of his shoulders.  
Broad. Proud. Red.  
And increasingly indecisive.

“Then why are you still acting like this?”

There is a small, childish pout in her voice, one that would be difficult to recognize if he hadn’t known her long enough to remember.

“Like what?” he asks, knowing full well what she means.

“I’ve never seen you this way. I’ve never seen you doubt a single move.”

And her hands rest near the back of his neck like warm sun on his coat. She tugs at him, turns him toward her. She is a woman now.  
Silently, but urgently, she insists.

He moves with reluctance, lips pressed tightly together.  
Her beautiful face tips back and catches the light.  
She smiles.

“Come on, old man. Is it Burrows? You don’t trust him?”

There is nothing he can do to reciprocate that expression. There is no joy in him, not even with Lurk standing before him, coaxing him forward into speech.  
His answer is as hard as his eyes.

“I trust him to be one thing, and that’s a traitor. As long as we’re prepared, there’s nothing to be afraid of. And we will be.”

“What is it, then?”

The breath he takes before speaking signals his confession’s importance.

I would speak these words to no one else.  
Please understand them.

He cannot look at her as he says them.

“I only… Wonder if it’s the right thing to do.”

Incredulity swamps her face. Billie gawks at her master and draws back.  
She struggles to recognize the man before her.  
Her hands clamp to his shoulders as if she is trying to prize the real Daud free.

Then she lets go.  
Her hands return to her sides.  
They gesture.  
Wildly.

“Since when do you care about the right thing? We do this for ourselves, Master. That’s what you told me.”

“I know.”

He shifts and clamps his eyes to her face.

Just like that, the conversation is over.

She rests a hand on his waist, feels muscle beneath a generous layer of padding.  
Her fingers clutch at the thick, red leather of his coat.

It is an invitation to stay the night, for no more words to be spoken.  
Only sighs and whispers will rise into the air over his bed.  
The night will close in on them like robes for their naked skin.  
Morning will come, fresh and bright, before they kill together.  
It will be simple. She will pay homage to him.

A dark gloved hand finds hers and pulls it away.

He refuses. Though the mere suggestion of coition is enough to stir him, something in his heart does not cooperate.

They sleep alone that night.

* * *

 

Morning finds him weary. The following week drags onward like a leviathan itself, towed reluctantly behind a whaling ship.  
He is the leviathan. Business is the ship. Billie is its captain.

She hasn’t given up yet. Alternately, she will interrogate him about his plans or make an attempt to ease his mind.  
There is no apparent rhyme or reason to her actions, but it happens whenever they are alone together. It isn’t long before he grows weary of it.

At last, he seems to do what she has been waiting for.  
He snaps.  
Puts her up against the wall.  
Talks down to her from as much height as he can muster.

“Billie Lurk.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you forgotten who I am?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you doubt my ability to complete this task?”

“Of course not.”

“Then let me make this clear to you. I will plan this assassination on my own time, and I will do it in my own way. Your part is to obey my orders and to execute my demands when the time comes. Nothing more. Do you understand me?”

She backs down.  
Nods.  
Shivers.

“Yes, Master.”

The silence stands between them with rigidity. It is allowed to sit, to stew, and for Billie to grind obedience back into her skin.

It is not the first time she has been told off like this. She is an assassin now, a woman grown, and her transgressions are more severe. Still, she stands the way she always has, stock still. She stares at him with coal-black eyes the way no one else can. There is no embarrassment there. No regret. Only a resolution to do better.

She reaches out.  
Touches the front of his trousers.  
And he responds.

Master.


End file.
